Advanced Research and Innovation Agency

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Whether we reassociate to Horizon or go down the Pioneer alternative, ARIA is designed to be complementary to those programmes. It has a higher tolerance of risk and seeks more long-shot opportunities, one advantage of that being that rapid lessons learned can quickly be transmitted to organisations with a necessarily lower tolerance of risk, thereby allowing everybody to benefit from its learnings.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, there is clear logic in protecting big and bold thinking from the constraints of bureaucracy, but it would be a mistake to think that there are two types of invention: the big ideas and the day-to-day research that goes on in our institutes and universities. Big ideas often start small. How can the Government ensure that the ring-fence is permeable so that the investment in ARIA benefits the entire research ecosystem?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Indeed—again, the point is well taken. We cannot have these types of organisations existing in separate universes and not talking to each other. It is crucial that they exploit their complementarity in this way.